


It Matters Little (Or Not At All)

by Shaitanah



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canon - Comics, Canon Compliant, Drama, F/M, Mosaic, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-21
Updated: 2011-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:31:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaitanah/pseuds/Shaitanah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leaving Drusilla in the asylum is the hardest decision Spike has ever made. [post-Spike # 8 to BtVS Season 9 # 1]</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Matters Little (Or Not At All)

**Author's Note:**

> Angel belongs to Joss Whedon. Spike series belongs to Brian Lynch, Franco Urru and IDW Publishing.

She seems almost entirely lucid. Well, on a good day she seems catatonic, staring blankly at the padded wall, probably counting those invisible stars of hers, and Spike is not so secretly glad he doesn’t have to talk to her. The truth is he has no idea what to say. Decades of gleeful slaughter and mayhem alongside each other – and nope, he still hasn’t found the right words. Fortunately, Dru has always been kind of a non-verbal person.

 

He just knows that he has to be here in case she needs him, like Angel was for Darla. So much for being his own man. But Spike has been in Angel’s shoes only too many times. Hell, he was Angel himself. And he was better at it. All things considered, he’ll think of something to say when she’s ready to talk.

 

Sometimes she murmurs quietly to herself, and that is when he almost recognizes her. He tries to imagine what their lives would have been like if they hadn’t gone to Suckydale. No Buffy. No soul. No fighting the good fight, no helping the helpless, no Angel, no occasional hell on earth. No being a better man.

 

“If my teeth fall out,” Drusilla chants, trailing her sharp nails over the soft padding, “will you make her a pretty necklace?” There is a distinct ripping noise. “A pretty necklace for a pretty blond dolly.”

 

He wishes she wouldn’t bring Buffy up. Not now. He’s just discovered that Buffy knows the full scenario of the Spike series grand finale, but he has no idea what she thinks of it. It makes things easier from a certain point of view. Then again, nothing between them is ever certain.

 

“That big bright ball of light,” Drusilla sing-songs. The rhythm of her words is like that of a nursery rhyme. She used to love them. “It is inside you.”

 

“Yes, love.”

 

“Why? Why would you want to set your entrails on fire? It hurts so much. It glows so pretty.”

 

She’s not completely wrong. But that glowy thing is his, he’s earned it, and though he won’t kick a puppy even in his soulless state now (unless said puppy hails from a hell dimension and makes plans to destroy the world), he’d rather feel it. It keeps him warm.

 

“Daddy won’t bite anymore,” Drusilla whines. “Spike has poisoned himself for her. Grandmummy’s dust. I’m all alone.”

 

Bugger that, Spike thinks. Bugger those bastard lawyers and their mindfucking games. Sanity, insanity, that’s all so relative. And when it comes to Dru, well, the devil himself couldn’t make head or tail of it. Spike just wants to tell her that there are plenty of good people in here. Not good as in tasty, all you can eat and suchlike. Good as in they’ll help her even if she doesn’t want it or deserve it. He knows. He’s been there.

 

There are things he means to ask her. Does she know about Angel Junior? Had she seen it coming? Does she know how exactly Darla died? Somehow, in the grand scheme of things, that is important. Because they used to be–

 

He leaves without saying goodbye. She is driving him insane. Hell gods with a guilt complex, he can deal with. Angel with a guilt complex, not so nice, but he’ll deal with that as well, considering Angel has a whole lot of groupies ready to give him a shoulder to cry on (Spike’s mostly in it for the mocking part). But _this_ , this is fucked up on so many levels that it’s off the chart already.

 

One word: _responsibility_. Months and months of it. He leaves, he comes back.

 

“Is she getting any better?” he asks as he lights another cigarette. He knows the instant he does it that Malposo will glare daggers at him for smoking right next to the bloody non-smoking sign again, but he’d rather she were angry about that than anything else.

 

“Define _better_ ,” Malposo shrugs. “She hasn’t eaten anyone, that definitely deserves a gold star in my book. But frankly, William, I doubt that your presence does her much good.”

 

It’s not very flattering when she puts it like that. Spike deals with demons every day; why shouldn’t he be able to put Dru’s demons to rest? Oh, he knows why. Because part of those is his.

 

“I thought you were going to leave, Spike,” Malposo says, putting playfulness aside, along with the name he had explicitly told her not to use.

 

He was. And he will. But leaving her is hard, harder than leaving Buffy, because he knows he doesn’t deserve Buffy. That makes it all right, makes it bearable, even though he will always feel her inside, in the soul, as if she had personally torn him open and placed the burning light inside.

 

“I just wonder,” he says, hesitantly. “What do I tell her?”

 

“Goodbye, for starters.”

 

* * *

 

She claws at the walls and sings her morbid lullabies. She is probably in a world of pain right now, but that’s okay. First you learn the difference between right and wrong, then you feel it. It’s worked for him.

 

He watches her through the opening, an unlit cigarette between his lips, and he tells her that he will walk away from her now, he needs it, but she needs it too. All in all, Malposo is right: this is holding both of them back.

 

“Tell me a bedtime story,” Dru says when she finally says something. Figures it’d be something like this.

 

He tells her how he got his soul back.

 

“Poor, poor Dru,” she pities herself. “First they gave him a chip, then they gave him filth. Shiny soul filth. Dear Spike can’t bite and won’t bite. Won’t hurt me if I ask him to.” She flings herself against the door, and for a second he catches the pained look in her eyes. “Hurt me, Spike! I’m _evil_.”

 

She cackles. He leaves. He won’t say it again today.

 

* * *

 

He remembers her scent in the night, the way she smelled after she’d just killed a child, decay and innocence rolled into one like a fine cigarette. He remembers making love to her in rooms full of corpses, on silken bedsheets drenched in blood, feeling like he belonged there. It was never like that with the Slayer. He was always on the doorstep, begging for an invitation or trying to lure her out into the dark.

 

Drusilla asks him to come in. She will never know how close he is to doing that.

 

“There are questions poking holes in my mind,” she tells him. No surprise there; things live and die inside Drusilla’s mind, worlds even, but Spike is far from ready to let it suck him in again.

 

“Ask them, pet,” he says. And let me go, he doesn’t say.

 

“Where…” Her voice breaks. If she breathed, she would be choking. “Where do birds go when they die?” And then she laughs, and he can tell, albeit without much certainty, that nothing has changed.

 

* * *

 

“How’s that goodbye coming along?” Malposo wants to know.

 

“Is that a hint, love?”

 

She gives him the sweetest smile.

 

“How should I put it? You’re being a nuisance, Spike.”

 

He raises an eyebrow at that, and wants to ask her if she’s ever met one Xander Harris. No doubt they would have clicked. But he can’t argue with her. Not because in her line of work she’s supposed to know better (Spike never trusted shrinks and he isn’t about to start now), but because _he_ knows better.

 

“You’ve come a long way, William.” For a moment he doesn’t even recognize Malposo’s voice; she sounds somewhat… softer. “But if you want her to follow in your footsteps, that might take a while.”

 

“She saved me,” he whispers. “Dru delivered me from mediocrity.” The words taste familiar. How–? Oh, right. Buffy. He said it to Buffy when he was about to stake Drusilla for her. A terrible gift she never could have accepted – he knows that now. He tried so hard to turn his love for Buffy into a duplicate of his feelings for Dru. No wonder she could not reciprocate.

 

Malposo smiles. She is probably the most unromantic person he has ever met, but something about that smile tells him that she understands just what he means.

 

* * *

 

“I’m leaving, Dru,” Spike says. This is a “good” day: she barely pays attention to his presence on the other side of the door, focused on painting instead. “I will not be coming back soon. There are things I need to– Anyhow, there are good people here, pet. Crazy people for sure, but at least they don’t shove slugs into your noggin, not anymore.”

 

He is babbling, and hopes to hell she isn’t listening. He clears his throat, which is a funny thing to do when one doesn’t breathe. There’s a lot of funny stuff going on lately.

 

“So, what I want to say is goodbye, love.”

 

He doesn’t wait for her to reply. She wouldn’t. But she does.

 

She says: “Better.” Just that. Just one word, in a tentative whisper, in a hoarse voice that isn’t hers.

 

Spike turns back and waits for her to go on.

 

“She made you want to be a better man,” Drusilla mutters, and asks her question: “Do you want me to be better?”

 

He can’t possibly ask anything of her. Not now. But maybe it’s the first step.

 

 _September 2011_


End file.
